ThursdayFebruary 9, 2006(Audio) Homily by Fr. Robert AltierFifth Week in Ordinary Time

Reading (1 Kings 11:4-13)Gospel (St. Mark 7:24-30)

In the readings today, we see two completely opposing perspectives on
things and a great warning for ourselves. In the first reading, we hear about
Solomon, to whom we are told that God Himself appeared twice. Solomon, of
course, was given wisdom as a gift and he is known as the wisest man to have
ever lived. We see that what Solomon did was to turn that wisdom away from God
and to himself. It is a warning for all of us in that way to be very careful
not to take the gifts that God has given to us and make them somehow selfish,
because all of the ability we have comes from Him. If we start looking at it
and saying, “Look at what I can do. Look at my talent, my ability, my, my, my…”
That is all we get into, and it is all about “me.” As soon as we start getting
into “me” instead of into God, we go straight down because we are focused in
the wrong direction.

Solomon, then, who knew God and knew that there is only one God, starts
building altars for all of his foreign wives. He even starts worshiping some of
these foreign gods. Then, worst of all, we are told that he even built an altar
to Molech. Molech is a demon who required human sacrifice. And so the people in
Israel actually began sacrificing their babies.

Not unlike America, is it? Or most of the other countries in the world
right now. We just do it in a little different way, but nonetheless the reality
is the same: We are sacrificing our babies to demons. Look at the result. Our
society is spiraling out of control, and it is for that very reason. There is
no possible way that a society can kill its own and think that it is going to
survive. What we have done in America, which was based on Christian principles,
is to give ourselves over to false gods. Maybe they do not have explicitly the
same names as the ones that Solomon started to worship, but they are false gods
nonetheless. Call them what you will – money, abortion, materialism – it is all
the same stuff.

They are all demonic things that make us think about ourselves, but the
reality is that if we are not looking at God, it is not just ourselves that we
are looking at. There is a spiritual reality that underlies these things. If
our focus is not on God and looking at what He is doing for us, then our focus
is ultimately going to be on Satan. Neither God nor Satan can be seen by us,
but only the effects can. So Satan is going to be right there to promise us all
kinds of things, but the reality is that what he is going to do is lead us
right into ourselves and take us down with him. Satan wants us in hell with
him, and he does not care what means he has to use to get us there. He is very
slick. Solomon fell into this trap, and we do too. He fell into it because he
had married 900 wives. What an idiot! Nonetheless, the fact of the matter is
that this man was caught up in himself, and that was the trap Satan used. Maybe
we will not fall into that particular trap, but Satan knows our weakness, and
if we are not praying and working on our virtues, he knows how to pull us down.
He will offer us whatever temptation we need.

Then, on the other side, we see this woman who comes to the Lord. She
is a pagan. She is a Greek. And the Lord tells her that He is not going to work
for her the miracle she is seeking by getting rid of the demon because He came
to the children of Israel. It is not right, He says, to take the bread from the
children and throw it to the dogs. But when the woman recognizes the reality that
she is in, she is able to acknowledge Him and first calls Him “Lord,” and then
points out that even the dogs under the table eat the scraps of the
children.
Because this woman was willing to make an act of faith in Him, she received the
favor for which she was looking.

So we see that if someone turns away from idols and turns to the true
God that the blessings of the Lord are going to be theirs. But if we turn away
from the worship of the one true God to false gods, to give ourselves over to
idols of whatever variety they might be, we are going to be in trouble. It is a
fine balance on the natural level to walk. It is as simple as can possibly be
on the spiritual level. There is only one God, and Him alone are we to worship.

Again, we need to be careful. We are probably not burning incense to
dollar bills and we are probably not bowing down with our faces to the ground
in front of our TV sets, but the reality is that if we are giving ourselves
over to such things, they become idols for us. If we start turning our hearts
away from God to put them on things of the natural level, or the preternatural
level, then we are going to be in trouble. Our hearts stray.

So we need to pray to keep our hearts focused on God. We need to have a
deep and profound relationship with God, not just an intellectual knowledge
that there is only one God and even to be able to acknowledge that, but to have
a relationship with Him because it is only in that relationship that we can be
assured that our hearts are not going to stray. We need to keep our hearts
focused on Him. It is not an intellectual exercise, but an exercise of the
heart, to keep our hearts where they belong: solely focused on the one true
God.

e is telling us, Thisi s what I want, but I
want

*This text was
transcribed from the audio recording of a homily by Father Robert Altier with minimal editing.